Are you mad, or what are you, that you squeak out yourcatches without mitigation or remorse of voice?—Twelfth Night.
Matilda, not dreaming of visitors, tripped into the apartment in a dress of forest green, with a small quiver by her side, and a bow and arrow in her hand. Her hair, black and glossy as the raven’s wing, curled like wandering clusters of dark ripe grapes under the edge of her round bonnet; and a plume of black feathers fell back negligently above it, with an almost horizontal inclination, that seemed the habitual effect of rapid motion against the wind. Her black eyes sparkled like sunbeams on a river: a clear, deep, liquid radiance, the reflection of ethereal fire,—tempered, not subdued, in the medium of its living and gentle mirror. Her lips were half opened to speak as she entered the apartment; and with a smile of recognition to the friar, and a courtesy to the stranger knight, she approached the baron and said, “You are late at your breakfast, father.”
“I am not at breakfast,” said the baron. “I have been at supper: my last night’s supper; for I had none.”
“I am sorry,” said Matilda, “you should have gone to bed supperless.”
“I did not go to bed supperless,” said the baron: “I did not go to bed at all: and what are you doing with that green dress and that bow and arrow?”
“I am going a-hunting,” said Matilda.
“A-hunting!” said the baron. “What, I warrant you, to meet with the earl, and slip your neck into the same noose?”
“No,” said Matilda: “I am not going out of our own woods to-day.”
“How do I know that?” said the baron. “What surety have I of that?”
“Here is the friar,” said Matilda. “He will be surety.”
“Not he,” said the baron: “he will undertake nothing but where the devil is a party concerned.”
“Yes, I will,” said the friar: “I will undertake any thing for the lady Matilda.”
“No matter for that,” said the baron: “she shall not go hunting to day.”
“Why, father,” said Matilda, “if you coop me up here in this odious castle, I shall pine and die like a lonely swan on a pool.
“No,” said the baron, “the lonely swan does not die on the pool. If there be a river at hand, she flies to the river, and finds her a mate; and so shall not you.”
“But,” said Matilda, “you may send with me any, or as many, of your grooms as you will.”
“My grooms,” said the baron, “are all false knaves. There is not a rascal among them but loves you better than me. Villains that I feed and clothe.”
“Surely,” said Matilda, “it is not villany to love me: if it be, I should be sorry my father were an honest man.” The baron relaxed his muscles into a smile. “Or my lover either,” added Matilda. The baron looked grim again.
“For your lover,” said the baron, “you may give God thanks of him. He is as arrant a knave as ever poached.”
“What, for hunting the king’s deer?” said Matilda. “Have I not heard you rail at the forest laws by the hour?”
“Did you ever hear me,” said the baron, “rail myself out of house and land? If I had done that, then were I a knave.”
“My lover,” said Matilda, “is a brave man, and a true man, and a generous man, and a young man, and a handsome man; aye, and an honest man too.”
“How can he be an honest man,” said the baron, “when he has neither house nor land, which are the better part of a man?”
“They are but the husk of a man,” said Matilda, “the worthless coat of the chesnut: the man himself is the kernel.”
“The man is the grape stone,” said the baron, “and the pulp of the melon. The house and land are the true substantial fruit, and all that give him savour and value.”
“He will never want house or land,” said Matilda, “while the meeting boughs weave a green roof in the wood, and the free range of the hart marks out the bounds of the forest.”
“Vert and venison! vert and venison!” exclaimed the baron. “Treason and flat rebellion. Confound your smiling face! what makes you look so good-humoured? What! you think I can’t look at you, and be in a passion? You think so, do you? We shall see. Have you no fear in talking thus, when here is the king’s liegeman come to take us all into custody, and confiscate our goods and chattels?”
“Nay, Lord Fitzwater,” said Sir Ralph, “you wrong me in your report. My visit is one of courtesy and excuse, not of menace and authority.”
“There it is,” said the baron: “every one takes a pleasure in contradicting me. Here is this courteous knight, who has not opened his mouth three times since he has been in my house except to take in provision, cuts me short in my story with a flat denial.”
“Oh! I cry you mercy, sir knight,” said Matilda; “I did not mark you before. I am your debtor for no slight favour, and so is my liege lord.”
“Her liege lord!” exclaimed the baron, taking large strides across the chamber.
“Pardon me, gentle lady,” said Sir Ralph. “Had I known you before yesterday, I would have cut off my right hand ere it should have been raised to do you displeasure.
“Oh sir,” said Matilda, “a good man may be forced on an ill office: but I can distinguish the man from his duty.” She presented to him her hand, which he kissed respectfully, and simultaneously with the contact thirty-two invisible arrows plunged at once into his heart, one from every point of the compass of his pericardia.
“Well, father,” added Matilda, “I must go to the woods.”
“Must you?” said the baron; “I say you must not.”
“But I am going,” said Matilda
“But I will have up the drawbridge,” said the baron.
“But I will swim the moat,” said Matilda.
“But I will secure the gates,” said the baron.
“But I will leap from the battlement,” said Matilda.
“But I will lock you in an upper chamber,” said the baron.
“But I will shred the tapestry,” said Matilda, “and let myself down.”
“But I will lock you in a turret,” said the baron, “where you shall only see light through a loophole.”
“But through that loophole,” said Matilda, “will I take my flight, like a young eagle from its eerie; and, father, while I go out freely, I will return willingly: but if once I slip out through a loop-hole——” She paused a moment, and then added, singing,—
The love that follows fainWill never its faith betray:But the faith that is held in a chainWill never be found again,If a single link give way.
The melody acted irresistibly on the harmonious propensities of the friar, who accordingly sang in his turn,—
For hark! hark! hark!The dog doth bark,That watches the wild deer’s lair.The hunter awakes at the peep of the dawn,But the lair it is empty, the deer it is gone,And the hunter knows not where.
Matilda and the friar then sang together,—
Then follow, oh follow! the hounds do cry:The red sun flames in the eastern sky:The stag bounds over the hollow.He that lingers in spirit, or loiters in hall,Shall see us no more till the evening fall,And no voice but the echo shall answer his call:Then follow, oh follow, follow:Follow, oh follow, follow!
During the process of this harmony, the baron’s eyes wandered from his daughter to the friar, and from the friar to his daughter again, with an alternate expression of anger differently modified: when he looked on the friar, it was anger without qualification; when he looked on his daughter it was still anger, but tempered by an expression of involuntary admiration and pleasure. These rapid fluctuations of the baron’s physiognomy—the habitual, reckless, resolute merriment in the jovial face of the friar,—and the cheerful, elastic spirits that played on the lips and sparkled in the eyes of Matilda,—would have presented a very amusing combination to Sir Ralph, if one of the three images in the group had not absorbed his total attention with feelings of intense delight very nearly allied to pain. The baron’s wrath was somewhat counteracted by the reflection that his daughter’s good spirits seemed to show that they would naturally rise triumphant over all disappointments; and he had had sufficient experience of her humour to know that she might sometimes be led, but never could be driven. Then, too, he was always delighted to hear her sing, though he was not at all pleased in this instance with the subject of her song. Still he would have endured the subject for the sake of the melody of the treble, but his mind was not sufficiently attuned to unison to relish the harmony of the bass. The friar’s accompaniment put him out of all patience, and—“So,” he exclaimed, “this is the way, you teach my daughter to renounce the devil, is it? A hunting friar, truly! Who ever heard before of a hunting friar? A profane, roaring, bawling, bumper-bibbing, neck-breaking, catch-singing friar?”
“Under favour, bold baron,” said the friar; but the friar was warm with canary, and in his singing vein; and he could not go on in plain unmusical prose. He therefore sang in a new tune,—
Though I be now a grey, grey friar,Yet I was once a hale young knight:The cry of my dogs was the only choirIn which my spirit did take delight.Little I recked of matin bell,But drowned its toll with my clanging horn:And the only beads I loved to tellWere the beads of dew on the spangled thorn.
The baron was going to storm, but the friar paused, and Matilda sang in repetition,—
Little I reck of matin bell,But drown its toll with my clanging horn:And the only beads I love to tellAre the beads of dew on the spangled thorn.
And then she and the friar sang the four lines together, and rang the changes upon them alternately.
Little I reck of matin bell,
sang the friar.
“A precious friar,” said the baron.
But drown its toll with my clanging horn, sang Matilda.
“More shame for you,” said the baron.
And the only beads I love to tellAre the beads of dew on the spangled thorn,
sang Matilda and the friar together.
“Penitent and confessor,” said the baron: “a hopeful pair truly.”
The friar went on,—
An archer keen I was withal,As ever did lean on greenwood tree;And could make the fleetest roebuck fall,A good three hundred yards from me.Though changeful time, with hand severe,Has made me now these joys forego,Yet my heart bounds whene’er I hearYoicks! hark away! and tally ho!
Matilda chimed in as before.
“Are you mad?” said the baron. “Are you insane? Are you possessed? What do you mean? What in the devil’s name do you both mean?”
Yoicks! hark away! and tally ho!
roared the friar.
The baron’s pent-up wrath had accumulated like the waters above the dam of an overshot mill. The pond-head of his passion being now filled to the utmost limit of its capacity, and beginning to overflow in the quivering of his lips and the flashing of his eyes, he pulled up all the flash-boards at once, and gave loose to the full torrent of his indignation, by seizing, like furious Ajax, not a messy stone more than two modern men could raise, but a vast dish of beef more than fifty ancient yeomen could eat, and whirled it like a coit, in terrorem, over the head of the friar, to the extremity of the apartment,
Where it on oaken floor did settle,With mighty din of ponderous metal.
“Nay father,” said Matilda, taking the baron’s hand, “do not harm the friar: he means not to offend you. My gaiety never before displeased you. Least of all should it do so now, when I have need of all my spirits to outweigh the severity of my fortune.”
As she spoke the last words, tears started into her eyes, which, as if ashamed of the involuntary betraying of her feelings, she turned away to conceal. The baron was subdued at once. He kissed his daughter, held out his hand to the friar, and said, “Sing on, in God’s name, and crack away the flasks till your voice swims in canary.” Then turning to Sir Ralph, he said, “You see how it is, sir knight. Matilda is my daughter; but she has me in leading-strings, that is the truth of it.”
‘T is true, no lover has that powerTo enforce a desperate amourAs he that has two strings to his bowAnd burns for love and money too.—BUTLER.
The friar had often had experience of the baron’s testy humour; but it had always before confined itself to words, in which the habit of testiness often mingled more expression of displeasure than the internal feeling prompted. He knew the baron to be hot and choleric, but at the same time hospitable and generous; passionately fond of his daughter, often thwarting her in seeming, but always yielding to her in fact. The early attachment between Matilda and the Earl of Huntingdon had given the baron no serious reason to interfere with her habits and pursuits, which were so congenial to those of her lover; and not being over-burdened with orthodoxy, that is to say, not being seasoned with more of the salt of the spirit than was necessary to preserve him from excommunication, confiscation, and philotheoparoptesism,1he was not sorry to encourage his daughter’s choice of her confessor in brother Michael, who had more jollity and less hypocrisy than any of his fraternity, and was very little anxious to disguise his love of the good things of this world under the semblance of a sanctified exterior. The friar and Matilda had often sung duets together, and had been accustomed to the baron’s chiming in with a stormy capriccio, which was usually charmed into silence by some sudden turn in the witching melodies of Matilda. They had therefore naturally calculated, as far as their wild spirits calculated at all, on the same effects from the same causes. But the circumstances of the preceding day had made an essential alteration in the case. The baron knew well, from the intelligence he had received, that the earl’s offence was past remission: which would have been of less moment but for the awful fact of his castle being in the possession of the king’s forces, and in those days possession was considerably more than eleven points of the law. The baron was therefore convinced that the earl’s outlawry was infallible, and that Matilda must either renounce her lover, or become with him an outlaw and a fugitive. In proportion, therefore, to the baron’s knowledge of the strength and duration of her attachment, was his fear of the difficulty of its ever being overcome: her love of the forest and the chase, which he had never before discouraged, now presented itself to him as matter of serious alarm; and if her cheerfulness gave him hope on the one hand by indicating a spirit superior to all disappointments, it was suspicious to him on the other, as arising from some latent certainty of being soon united to the earl. All these circumstances concurred to render their songs of the vanished deer and greenwood archery and Yoicks and Harkaway, extremely mal-a-propos, and to make his anger boil and bubble in the cauldron of his spirit, till its more than ordinary excitement burst forth with sudden impulse into active manifestation.
But as it sometimes happens, from the mightOf rage in minds that can no farther go,As high as they have mounted in despiteIn their remission do they sink as low,To our bold baron did it happen so.2
For his discobolic exploit proved the climax of his rage, and was succeeded by an immediate sense that he had passed the bounds of legitimate passion; and he sunk immediately from the very pinnacle of opposition to the level of implicit acquiescence. The friar’s spirits were not to be marred by such a little incident. He was half-inclined, at first, to return the baron’s compliment; but his love of Matilda checked him; and when the baron held out his hand, the friar seized it cordially, and they drowned all recollection of the affair by pledging each other in a cup of canary.
The friar, having stayed long enough to see every thing replaced on a friendly footing, rose, and moved to take his leave. Matilda told him he must come again on the morrow, for she had a very long confession to make to him. This the friar promised to do, and departed with the knight.
Sir Ralph, on reaching the abbey, drew his followers together, and led them to Locksley Castle, which he found in the possession of his lieutenant; whom he again left there with a sufficient force to hold it in safe keeping in the king’s name, and proceeded to London to report the results of his enterprise.
Now Henry our royal king was very wroth at the earl’s evasion, and swore by Saint Thomas-a-Becket (whom he had himself translated into a saint by having him knocked on the head), that he would give the castle and lands of Locksley to the man who should bring in the earl. Hereupon ensued a process of thought in the mind of the knight. The eyes of the fair huntress of Arlingford had left a wound in his heart which only she who gave could heal. He had seen that the baron was no longer very partial to the outlawed earl, but that he still retained his old affection for the lands and castle of Locksley. Now the lands and castle were very fair things in themselves, and would be pretty appurtenances to an adventurous knight; but they would be doubly valuable as certain passports to the father’s favour, which was one step towards that of the daughter, or at least towards obtaining possession of her either quietly or perforce; for the knight was not so nice in his love as to consider the lady’s free grace a sine qua non: and to think of being, by any means whatever, the lord of Locksley and Arlingford, and the husband of the bewitching Matilda, was to cut in the shades of futurity a vista very tempting to a soldier of fortune. He set out in high spirits with a chosen band of followers, and beat up all the country far and wide around both the Ouse and the Trent; but fortune did not seem disposed to second his diligence, for no vestige whatever could he trace of the earl. His followers, who were only paid with the wages of hope, began to murmur and fall off; for, as those unenlightened days were ignorant of the happy invention of paper machinery, by which one promise to pay is satisfactorily paid with another promise to pay, and that again with another in infinite series, they would not, as their wiser posterity has done, take those tenders for true pay which were not sterling; so that, one fine morning, the knight found himself sitting on a pleasant bank of the Trent, with only a solitary squire, who still clung to the shadow of preferment, because he did not see at the moment any better chance of the substance.
The knight did not despair because of the desertion of his followers: he was well aware that he could easily raise recruits if he could once find trace of his game; he, therefore, rode about indefatigably over hill and dale, to the great sharpening of his own appetite and that of his squire, living gallantly from inn to inn when his purse was full, and quartering himself in the king’s name on the nearest ghostly brotherhood when it happened to be empty. An autumn and a winter had passed away, when the course of his perlustations brought him one evening into a beautiful sylvan valley, where he found a number of young women weaving garlands of flowers, and singing over their pleasant occupation. He approached them, and courteously inquired the way to the nearest town.
“There is no town within several miles,” was the answer.
“A village, then, if it be but large enough to furnish an inn?”
“There is Gamwell just by, but there is no inn nearer than the nearest town.”
“An abbey, then?”
“There is no abbey nearer than the nearest inn.”
“A house then, or a cottage, where I may obtain hospitality for the night?”
“Hospitality!” said one of the young women; “you have not far to seek for that. Do you not know that you are in the neighbourhood of Gamwell-Hall?”
“So far from it,” said the knight, “that I never heard the name of Gamwell-Hall before.”
“Never heard of Gamwell-Hall?” exclaimed all the young women together, who could as soon have dreamed of his never having heard of the sky.
“Indeed, no,” said Sir Ralph; “but I shall be very happy to get rid of my ignorance.”
“And so shall I,” said his squire; “for it seems that in this case knowledge will for once be a cure for hunger, wherewith I am grievously afflicted.”
“And why are you so busy, my pretty damsels, weaving these garlands?” said the knight.
“Why, do you not know, sir,” said one of the young women, “that to-morrow is Gamwell feast?”
The knight was again obliged, with all humility, to confess his ignorance.
“Oh! sir,” said his informant, “then you will have something to see, that I can tell you; for we shall choose a Queen of the May, and we shall crown her with flowers, and place her in a chariot of flowers, and draw it with lines of flowers, and we shall hang all the trees with flowers, and we shall strew all the ground with flowers, and we shall dance with flowers, and in flowers, and on flowers, and we shall be all flowers.”
“That you will,” said the knight; “and the sweetest and brightest of all the flowers of the May, my pretty damsels.” On which all the pretty damsels smiled at him and each other.
“And there will be all sorts of May-games, and there will be prizes for archery, and there will be the knight’s ale, and the foresters’ venison, and there will be Kit Scrapesqueak with his fiddle, and little Tom Whistlerap with his fife and tabor, and Sam Trumtwang with his harp, and Peter Muggledrone with his bagpipe, and how I shall dance with Will Whitethorn!” added the girl, clapping her hands as she spoke, and bounding from the ground with the pleasure of the anticipation.
A tall athletic young man approached, to whom the rustic maidens courtesied with great respect; and one of them informed Sir Ralph that it was young Master William Gamwell. The young gentleman invited and conducted the knight to the hall, where he introduced him to the old knight his father, and to the old lady his mother, and to the young lady his sister, and to a number of bold yeomen, who were laying siege to beef, brawn, and plum pie around a ponderous table, and taking copious draughts of old October. A motto was inscribed over the interior door,—
EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY:
an injunction which Sir Ralph and his squire showed remarkable alacrity in obeying. Old Sir Guy of Gamwell gave Sir Ralph a very cordial welcome, and entertained him during supper with several of his best stories, enforced with an occasional slap on the back, and pointed with a peg in the ribs; a species of vivacious eloquence in which the old gentleman excelled, and which is supposed by many of that pleasant variety of the human spectes, known by the name of choice fellows and comical dogs, to be the genuine tangible shape of the cream of a good joke.
What! shall we have incision? shall we embrew?—Henry IV.
Old Sir Guy of Gamwell, and young William Gamwell, and fair Alice Gamwell, and Sir Ralph Montfaucon and his squire, rode together the next morning to the scene of the feast. They arrived on a village green, surrounded with cottages peeping from among the trees by which the green was completely encircled. The whole circle was hung round with one continuous garland of flowers, depending in irregular festoons from the branches. In the centre of the green was a May-pole hidden in boughs and garlands; and a multitude of round-faced bumpkins and cherry-checked lasses were dancing around it, to the quadruple melody of Scrapesqueak, Whistlerap, Trumtwang, and Muggledrone: harmony we must not call it; for, though they had agreed to a partnership in point of tune, each, like a true painstaking man, seemed determined to have his time to himself: Muggledrone played allegretto, Trumtwang allegro, Whistlerap presto, and Scrapesqueak prestissimo. There was a kind of mathematical proportion in their discrepancy: while Muggledrone played the tune four times, Trumtwang played it five, Whistlerap six, and Scrapesqueak eight; for the latter completely distanced all his competitors, and indeed worked his elbow so nimbly that its outline was scarcely distinguishable through the mistiness of its rapid vibration.
While the knight was delighting his eyes and ears with these pleasant sights and sounds, all eyes were turned in one direction; and Sir Ralph, looking round, saw a fair lady in green and gold come riding through the trees, accompanied by a portly friar in grey, and several fair damsels and gallant grooms. On their nearer approach, he recognised the lady Matilda and her ghostly adviser, brother Michael. A party of foresters arrived from another direction, and then ensued cordial interchanges of greeting, and collisions of hands and lips, among the Gamwells and the new-comers,—“How does my fair coz, Mawd?” and “How does my sweet coz, Mawd?” and “How does my wild coz, Mawd?” And “Eh! jolly friar, your hand, old boy:” and “Here, honest friar:” and “To me, merry friar:” and “By your favour, mistress Alice:” and “Hey! cousin Robin:” and “Hey! cousin Will:” and “Od’s life! merry Sir Guy, you grow younger every year,”—as the old knight shook them all in turn with one hand, and slapped them on the back with the other, in token of his affection. A number of young men and women advanced, some drawing, and others dancing round, a floral car; and having placed a crown of flowers on Matilda’s head, they saluted her Queen of the May, and drew her to the place appointed for the rural sports.
A hogshead of ale was abroach under an oak, and a fire was blazing in an open space before the trees to roast the fat deer which the foresters brought. The sports commenced; and, after an agreeable series of bowling, coiling, pitching, hurling, racing, leaping, grinning, wrestling or friendly dislocation of joints, and cudgel-playing or amicable cracking of skulls, the trial of archery ensued. The conqueror was to be rewarded with a golden arrow from the hand of the Queen of the May, who was to be his partner in the dance till the close of the feast. This stimulated the knight’s emulation: young Gamwell supplied him with a bow and arrow, and he took his station among the foresters, but had the mortification to be out-shot by them all, and to see one of them lodge the point of his arrow in the golden ring of the centre, and receive the prize from the hand of the beautiful Matilda, who smiled on him with particular grace. The jealous knight scrutinised the successful champion with great attention, and surely thought he had seen that face before. In the mean time the forester led the lady to the station. The luckless Sir Ralph drank deep draughts of love from the matchless grace of her attitudes, as, taking the bow in her left hand, and adjusting the arrow with her right, advancing her left foot, and gently curving her beautiful figure with a slight motion of her head that waved her black feathers and her ringleted hair, she drew the arrow to its head, and loosed it from her open fingers. The arrow struck within the ring of gold, so close to that of the victorious forester that the points were in contact, and the feathers were intermingled. Great acclamations succeeded, and the forester led Matilda to the dance. Sir Ralph gazed on her fascinating motions till the torments of baffled love and jealous rage became unendurable; and approaching young Gamwell, he asked him if he knew the name of that forester who was leading the dance with the Queen of the May?
“Robin, I believe,” said young Gamwell carelessly; “I think they call him Robin.”
“Is that all you know of him?” said Sir Ralph.
“What more should I know of him?” said young Gamwell.
“Then I can tell you,” said Sir Ralph, “he is the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon, on whose head is set so large a price.”
“Ay, is he?” said young Gamwell, in the same careless manner.
“He were a prize worth the taking,” said Sir Ralph.
“No doubt,” said young Gamwell.
“How think you?” said Sir Ralph: “are the foresters his adherents?”
“I cannot say,” said young Gamwell.
“Is your peasantry loyal and well-disposed?” said Sir Ralph.
“Passing loyal,” said young Gamwell.
“If I should call on them in the king’s name,” said Sir Ralph, “think you they would aid and assist?”
“Most likely they would,” said young Gamwell, “one side or the other.”
“Ay, but which side?” said the knight.
“That remains to be tried,” said young Gamwell.
“I have King Henry’s commission,” said the knight, “to apprehend this earl that was. How would you advise me to act, being, as you see, without attendant force?”
“I would advise you,” said young Gamwell, “to take yourself off without delay, unless you would relish the taste of a volley of arrows, a shower of stones, and a hailstorm of cudgel-blows, which would not be turned aside by a God save King Henry.”
Sir Ralph’s squire no sooner heard this, and saw by the looks of the speaker that he was not likely to prove a false prophet, than he clapped spurs to his horse and galloped off with might and main. This gave the knight a good excuse to pursue him, which he did with great celerity, calling, “Stop, you rascal.” When the squire fancied himself safe out of the reach of pursuit, he checked his speed, and allowed the knight to come up with him. They rode on several miles in silence, till they discovered the towers and spires of Nottingham, where the knight introduced himself to the sheriff, and demanded an armed force to assist in the apprehension of the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon. The sheriff, who was willing to have his share of the prize, determined to accompany the knight in person, and regaled him and his man with good store of the best; after which, they, with a stout retinue of fifty men, took the way to Gamwell feast.
“God’s my life,” said the sheriff, as they rode along, “I had as lief you would tell me of a service of plate. I much doubt if this outlawed earl, this forester Robin, be not the man they call Robin Hood, who has quartered himself in Sherwood Forest, and whom in endeavouring to apprehend I have fallen divers times into disasters. He has gotten together a band of disinherited prodigals, outlawed debtors, excommunicated heretics, elder sons that have spent all they had, and younger sons that never had any thing to spend; and with these he kills the king’s deer, and plunders wealthy travellers of five-sixths of their money; but if they be abbots or bishops, them he despoils utterly.”
The sheriff then proceeded to relate to his companion the adventure of the abbot of Doubleflask (which some grave historians have related of the abbot of Saint Mary’s, and others of the bishop of Hereford): how the abbot, returning to his abbey in company with his high selerer, who carried in his portmanteau the rents of the abbey-lands, and with a numerous train of attendants, came upon four seeming peasants, who were roasting the king’s venison by the king’s highway: how, in just indignation at this flagrant infringement of the forest laws, he asked them what they meant, and they answered that they meant to dine: how he ordered them to be seized and bound, and led captive to Nottingham, that they might know wild-flesh to have been destined by Providence for licensed and privileged appetites, and not for the base hunger of unqualified knaves: how they prayed for mercy, and how the abbot swore by Saint Charity that he would show them none: how one of them thereupon drew a bugle horn from under his smock-frock and blew three blasts, on which the abbot and his train were instantly surrounded by sixty bowmen in green: how they tied him to a tree, and made him say mass for their sins: how they unbound him, and sate him down with them to dinner, and gave him venison and wild-fowl and wine, and made him pay for his fare all the money in his high selerer’s portmanteau, and enforced him to sleep all night under a tree in his cloak, and to leave the cloak behind him in the morning: how the abbot, light in pocket and heavy in heart, raised the country upon Robin Hood, for so he had heard the chief forester called by his men, and hunted him into an old woman’s cottage: how Robin changed dresses with the old woman, and how the abbot rode in great triumph to Nottingham, having in custody an old woman in a green doublet and breeches: how the old woman discovered herself: how the merrymen of Nottingham laughed at the abbot: how the abbot railed at the old woman, and how the old woman out-railed the abbot, telling him that Robin had given her food and fire through the winter, which no abbot would ever do, but would rather take it from her for what he called the good of the church, by which he meant his own laziness and gluttony; and that she knew a true man from a false thief, and a free forester from a greedy abbot.
“Thus you see,” added the sheriff, “how this villain perverts the deluded people by making them believe that those who tithe and toll upon them for their spiritual and temporal benefit are not their best friends and fatherly guardians; for he holds that in giving to boors and old women what he takes from priests and peers, he does but restore to the former what the latter had taken from them; and this the impudent varlet calls distributive justice. Judge now if any loyal subject can be safe in such neighbourhood.”
While the sheriff was thus enlightening his companion concerning the offenders, and whetting his own indignation against them, the sun was fast sinking to the west. They rode on till they came in view of a bridge, which they saw a party approaching from the opposite side, and the knight presently discovered that the party consisted of the lady Matilda and friar Michael, young Gamwell, cousin Robin, and about half-a-dozen foresters. The knight pointed out the earl to the sheriff, who exclaimed, “Here, then, we have him an easy prey;” and they rode on manfully towards the bridge, on which the other party made halt.
“Who be these,” said the friar, “that come riding so fast this way? Now, as God shall judge me, it is that false knight Sir Ralph Montfaucon, and the sheriff of Nottingham, with a posse of men. We must make good our post, and let them dislodge us if they may.”
The two parties were now near enough to parley; and the sheriff and the knight, advancing in the front of the cavalcade, called on the lady, the friar, young Gamwell, and the foresters, to deliver up that false-traitor, Robert, formerly Earl of Huntingdon. Robert himself made answer by letting fly an arrow that struck the ground between the fore feet of the sheriff’s horse. The horse reared up from the whizzing, and lodged the sheriff in the dust; and, at the same time, the fair Matilda favoured the knight with an arrow in his right arm, that compelled him to withdraw from the affray. His men lifted the sheriff carefully up, and replaced him on his horse, whom he immediately with great rage and zeal urged on to the assault with his fifty men at his heels, some of whom were intercepted in their advance by the arrows of the foresters and Matilda; while the friar, with an eight-foot staff, dislodged the sheriff a second time, and laid on him with all the vigour of the church militant on earth, in spite of his ejaculations of “Hey, friar Michael! What means this, honest friar? Hold, ghostly friar! Hold, holy friar!”—till Matilda interposed, and delivered the battered sheriff to the care of the foresters. The friar continued flourishing his staff among the sheriff’s men, knocking down one, breaking the ribs of another, dislocating the shoulder of a third, flattening the nose of a fourth, cracking the skull of a fifth, and pitching a sixth into the river, till the few, who were lucky enough to escape with whole bones, clapped spurs to their horses and fled for their lives, under a farewell volley of arrows.
Sir Ralph’s squire, meanwhile, was glad of the excuse of attending his master’s wound to absent himself from the battle; and put the poor knight to a great deal of unnecessary pain by making as long a business as possible of extracting the arrow, which he had not accomplished when Matilda, approaching, extracted it with great facility, and bound up the wound with her scarf, saying, “I reclaim my arrow, sir knight, which struck where I aimed it, to admonish you to desist from your enterprise. I could as easily have lodged it in your heart.”
“It did not need,” said the knight, with rueful gallantry; “you have lodged one there already.”
“If you mean to say that you love me,” said Matilda, “it is more than I ever shall you: but if you will show your love by no further interfering with mine, you will at least merit my gratitude.”
The knight made a wry face under the double pain of heart and body caused at the same moment by the material or martial, and the metaphorical or erotic arrow, of which the latter was thus barbed by a declaration more candid than flattering; but he did not choose to put in any such claim to the lady’s gratitude as would bar all hopes of her love: he therefore remained silent; and the lady and her escort, leaving him and the sheriff to the care of the squire, rode on till they came in sight of Arlingford Castle, when they parted in several directions. The friar rode off alone; and after the foresters had lost sight of him they heard his voice through the twilight, singing,—
A staff, a staff, of a young oak graff,That is both stoure and stiff,Is all a good friar can needs desireTo shrive a proud sheriffe.And thou, fine fellowe, who hast tasted soOf the forester’s greenwood game,Wilt be in no haste thy time to wasteIn seeking more taste of the same:Or this can I read thee, and riddle thee well,Thou hadst better by far be the devil in hell,Than the sheriff of Nottinghame.
Now, master sheriff, what’s your will with me?—Henry IV.
Matilda had carried her point with the baron of ranging at liberty whithersoever she would, under her positive promise to return home; she was a sort of prisoner on parole: she had obtained this indulgence by means of an obsolete habit of always telling the truth and keeping her word, which our enlightened age has discarded with other barbarisms, but which had the effect of giving her father so much confidence in her, that he could not help considering her word a better security than locks and bars.
The baron had been one of the last to hear of the rumours of the new outlaws of Sherwood, as Matilda had taken all possible precautions to keep those rumours from his knowledge, fearing that they might cause the interruption of her greenwood liberty; and it was only during her absence at Gamwell feast, that the butler, being thrown off his guard by liquor, forgot her injunctions, and regaled the baron with a long story of the right merry adventure of Robin Hood and the abbot of Doubleflask.
The baron was one morning, as usual, cutting his way valorously through a rampart of cold provision, when his ears were suddenly assailed by a tremendous alarum, and sallying forth, and looking from his castle wall, he perceived a large party of armed men on the other side of the moat, who were calling on the warder in the king’s name to lower the drawbridge and raise the portcullis, which had both been secured by Matilda’s order. The baron walked along the battlement till he came opposite to these unexpected visitors, who, as soon as they saw him, called out, “Lower the drawbridge, in the king’s name.”
“For what, in the devil’s name?” said the baron.
“The sheriff of Nottingham,” said one, “lies in bed grievously bruised, and many of his men are wounded, and several of them slain; and Sir Ralph Montfaucon, knight, is sore wounded in the arm; and we are charged to apprehend William Gamwell the younger, of Gamwell Hall, and father Michael of Rubygill Abbey, and Matilda Fitzwater of Arlingford Castle, as agents and accomplices in the said breach of the king’s peace.”
“Breach of the king’s fiddlestick!” answered the baron. “What do you mean by coming here with your cock and bull, stories of my daughter grievously bruising the sheriff of Nottingham? You are a set of vagabond rascals in disguise; and I hear, by the bye, there is a gang of thieves that has just set up business in Sherwood Forest: a pretty presence, indeed, to get into my castle with force and arms, and make a famine in my buttery, and a drought in my cellar, and a void in my strong box, and a vacuum in my silver scullery.”
“Lord Fitzwater,” cried one, “take heed how you resist lawful authority: we will prove ourselves——”
“You will prove yourselves arrant knaves, I doubt not,” answered the baron; “but, villains, you shall be more grievously bruised by me than ever was the sheriff by my daughter (a pretty tale truly!), if you do not forthwith avoid my territory.”
By this time the baron’s men had flocked to the battlements, with long-bows and cross-bows, slings and stones, and Matilda with her bow and quiver at their head. The assailants, finding the castle so well defended, deemed it expedient to withdraw till they could return in greater force, and rode off to Rubygill Abbey, where they made known their errand to the father abbot, who, having satisfied himself of their legitimacy, and conned over the allegations, said that doubtless brother Michael had heinously offended; but it was not for the civil law to take cognizance of the misdoings of a holy friar; that he would summon a chapter of monks, and pass on the offender a sentence proportionate to his offence. The ministers of civil justice said that would not do. The abbot said it would do and should; and bade them not provoke the meekness of his catholic charity to lay them under the curse of Rome. This threat had its effect, and the party rode off to Gamwell-Hall, where they found the Gamwells and their men just sitting down to dinner, which they saved them the trouble of eating by consuming it in the king’s name themselves, having first seized and bound young Gamwell; all which they accomplished by dint of superior numbers, in despite of a most vigorous stand made by the Gamwellites in defence of their young master and their provisions.
The baron, meanwhile, after the ministers of justice had departed, interrogated Matilda concerning the alleged fact of the grievous bruising of the sheriff of Nottingham. Matilda told him the whole history of Gamwell feast, and of their battle on the bridge, which had its origin in a design of the sheriff of Nottingham to take one of the foresters into custody.
“Ay! ay!” said the baron, “and I guess who that forester was; but truly this friar is a desperate fellow. I did not think there could have been so much valour under a grey frock. And so you wounded the knight in the arm. You are a wild girl, Mawd,—a chip of the old block, Mawd. A wild girl, and a wild friar, and three or four foresters, wild lads all, to keep a bridge against a tame knight, and a tame sheriff, and fifty tame varlets; by this light, the like was never heard! But do you know, Mawd, you must not go about so any more, sweet Mawd: you must stay at home, you must ensconce; for there is your tame sheriff on the one hand, that will take you perforce; and there is your wild forester on the other hand, that will take you without any force at all, Mawd: your wild forester, Robin, cousin Robin, Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest, that beats and binds bishops, spreads nets for archbishops, and hunts a fat abbot as if he were a buck: excellent game, no doubt, but you must hunt no more in such company. I see it now: truly I might have guessed before that the bold outlaw Robin, the most courteous Robin, the new thief of Sherwood Forest, was your lover, the earl that has been: I might have guessed it before, and what led you so much to the woods; but you hunt no more in such company. No more May games and Gamwell feasts. My lands and castle would be the forfeit of a few more such pranks; and I think they are as well in my hands as the king’s, quite as well.”
“You know, father,” said Matilda, “the condition of keeping me at home: I get out if I can, and not on parole.”
“Ay! ay!” said the baron, “if you can; very true: watch and ward, Mawd, watch and ward is my word: if you can, is yours. The mark is set, and so start fair.”
The baron would have gone on in this way for an hour; but the friar made his appearance with a long oak staff in his hand, singing,—